Depression and More (Contains potentially triggering content. Read at your own risk)

I'm trying to keep my system clean as I deal with symptoms. Despite that, at times nightmares and other symptoms get worse. You have to shock yourself awake in the morning so you don't feel like you're cool and calm on the outside, and screaming on the inside. You feel bombarded with pain and flashbacks. Many times it's like bits and pieces that you don't know. On the other hand, you can't just sit back and do nothing.

It's not a matter of torturing yourself. It's a matter of trying to face your trauma history as best you can. As you do that, one minute it's pain. Then, almost crippling depression. Not to the point of wanting to off yourself or going back to anti-depressants that don't help (at least in my case).

All of the mental health sources that I trust say the same thing. Considering your long history of horrible untreated trauma, it only makes sense that it's flooding out now. If it didn't, then you'd have another breakdown.

Flashbacks happen, and you fight to not give into sick and twisted abuse and dissociative loops. What else can you do? As you do fight back, you have to be careful to not black out. By the end of the day, you're so wiped out you literally can't get up.

There's no long term illness caused by this abuse. No neurological damage in any way. Yet, I have to fight to focus every day. Even by doing the usual grounding techniques, many don't work.

What do you do then?

In my case, it's a long history of abuse, abandonment and fighting to no fall apart. Rampant alcoholism, addictions and severe illnesses. A serious junk food habit that only made things worse. Try roughly 300 gram of sugar a day. Endless gallons of caffeine, lots of salt and various other chemicals.

Now, I don't do that stuff anymore. The junk food is still a battle at times. But nowhere as out of control as it used to be.

We just want a sense of balance. Not perfectionism. But balance.